South Korea's daily Covid cases hit record high of over 36,000

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the country reported 36,362 more cases of Covid for the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to 971,018. 

The daily caseload was up from 27,443 in the previous day, surpassing 36,000 for the first time. The recent resurgence was driven by cluster infections in the Seoul metropolitan area amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, which became a dominant strain here. 

Of the new cases, 8,564 were Seoul residents. The number of newly infected people living in Gyeonggi province and the western port city of Incheon was 10,419 and 2,494 respectively. 

The virus spread also raged in the non-metropolitan region. The number of new infections in the non-capital areas was 14,685, or 40.6 per cent of the total local transmission.

 Among the new cases, 200 were imported from overseas, lifting the total to 26,167. The number of infected people who were in a serious condition stood at 269, up 12 from the previous day. 

Twenty-two more deaths were confirmed, leaving the death toll at 6,858. The total fatality rate was 0.71 per cent. The country has administered Covid vaccines to 44,674,323 people, or 87.1 per cent of the total population, and the number of fully inoculated people was 44,092,874, or 85.9 per cent of the population. 

The number of those who received booster jabs was 27,952,416 people, or 54.5 per cent of the population.